left eye on gub'ment

GAO’s (non)Report on FBI’s Prioritization of Counterterrorism

Two years of stonewalling by the FBI, and this report on the agency’s counterterrorism work is the best the Government Accountability Office can do? After the FBI, post-9/11, declared counterterrorism to be its top investigative priority, it repeatedly refused to cooperate with GAO’s efforts to assess its effectiveness.

Seems the FBI won this round. I was snoring before making it to the end of the report’s title: “Vacancies Have Declined, but FBI Has Not Assessed the Long-Term Sustainability of Its Strategy for Addressing Vacancies.” Rather than being about the FBI’s effectiveness in, well, countering terrorism, the GAO gives a report about job vacancies.

Secrecy News puts a positive spin on things. “While the substance of the new GAO report is of ephemeral interest,” Steven Aftergood writes today, “the report may nevertheless have long-term significance as a catalyst for, and a portent of, greater GAO involvement in intelligence oversight.”